


If He's Soft

by hoomhum



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, suicide ideation, winter soldier recovery fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:20:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4643829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoomhum/pseuds/hoomhum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Asset knew nothing but orders and the cold. Then one day, he didn't.<br/>Canon compliant up to CA: The Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've reformatted the story, cleaned up the tags, and made a few changes, particularly in Chapter 2.

It took them four days to find him. More accurately, it took them four days to pull together some semblance of order from the smoking wreckage of Project Insight. Under no circumstances, even complete destruction, would Hydra allow themselves to lose the Asset.  _Your work has shaped the century_ , Secretary Pierce had said. There was more work to be done. 

~

The Asset knew nothing but orders and the cold. His existence was structured around orders and missions. The cold encompassed everything else.

 _Run_ , they said. So he ran, sand shifting beneath his boots with every pounding step.  _Faster_. He ran because the pain of blisters and muscles straining with exhaustion was only a fraction of the pain he would experience if he stopped.

 _You'll damage him,_ someone said, hours later. He was still running, breath ragged beneath his mask.  _You said he was valuable._

He had no water, no food or breaks for rest. He ran with his gaze focused on the horizon until overstrained muscles finally gave out and landed him on his knees in the sand.

 _Not if he's soft_ , was the reply. 

~

The GPS they used to track him was part of a mechanism which could also be used to render him unconscious. It hadn't been set off for years. Obedience was branded into him, a bright flame against his mind. It was muscle memory, impulse and instinct wound like a spring. When they told him to come, he went.

Four days without orders was enough time for some of the conditioning to crack.

 _I killed him,_ he said, when asked about his last mission.  _Killed him and waited for instruction._

He was immediately struck across the face. It was a lie. They knew it and he knew it, but for some reason the words to describe what had actually happened never managed to leave his throat.

 _Wipe him._  

_~_

No matter his last memory before the cold, he always awoke the same way. Whatever dirt and grime from the last mission had covered him was gone. He ate everything on the tray given to him and kept silent during the briefing.

Orders were always the same. He was a tool, but he was not a fine tuned instrument. He was not meant for undercover operations, not suited to blend in with the populace. He was the wrecking ball when he was not a sniper’s bullet.

Eliminate all opposition in the building. Stop the target at all costs. Kill. Kill, kill, kill. Every time he woke there was a picture and a name. He evaluated their threat level himself if it was not given to him, and remembered every one. His only focus was the target.

At all costs did not sit well with some of his handlers. His own injuries were of no consequence, so long as the mission was completed. The missions were always completed.

 _He's damaged,_ someone complained. The arm that was still flesh had been burned badly in an explosion.  _He'll lose the other arm at this rate._

The response was almost immediate.  _Then we'll build him a new one._  

~

Ice was the soft reset. He preferred it as much as he preferred anything. It was the wipes he truly feared, though he knew they were necessary. He worked best with his mind made new. Without structure and command he was useless. A useless thing was not meant to be kept, but to be destroyed and rebuilt into something with purpose.

The Asset shaped the world. He never lived in it.

~ 

The change came on an ordinary day, routine like the rest. He waited to give his mission report, sitting alone in the room. He waited often, flipping one of his knives, fiddling with it. It was different than the one he'd had last time. The handle was lighter, the blade stronger.

"Drop the knife." Men entered the room in tactical gear, guns raised. He slipped the weapon into its holster and watched the man who had spoken. His handlers changed often and without warning. "On your knees."

He didn't resist as he was stripped of all his weapons. No matter how he himself was outfitted, his handler always had to have something to put him down with. Sometimes he'd hand over one of his own guns, if the handler didn't have one. It was the rule. Stop him if he needed stopping.

The men were discomfited by his obedience. They murmured uneasily to one another as he lifted his wrists to allow the restraints. They did not expect it of him, though it had always been expected of him. Something was different. 

~

No one had briefed him for this. He had no target, no instructions to kill, to shoot, to run. So he did nothing. Men came into the room in which he was kept and asked questions. They demanded reports and he spoke without hesitation, voice soft and monotone. Doing as told was safe. It meant no wipes, so he answered what he knew. They wanted more, but he had nothing more to tell them. He spoke of his missions, yet still they asked him things he could not know. Names. Locations. Were there others like him, how many other facilities existed and how could they be infiltrated. He didn't know. He hadn't been briefed.

It was a test, he decided eventually. They tested him frequently, more often his body than his mind. There was pain if he didn't pass, but here there was no pain. They left when he had no answers for them. He sat alone, waiting. The pain never came.

He was given no orders, so he sat. He waited, and waited, but the pain didn't come, nor the orders, nor the ice. There was no mission and there was no ice. That had never happened before.

~

Days became boring and nights even more so. They took blood samples from him, a doctor coming to look him over. What was he looking for? He ate when provided a tray and told to eat. He slept when a man outside his room exasperatedly told him to. He slept and he ate and he waited. If there was no mission, there was no use for him. The ice hurt, but it also ate the time between orders. He'd never faced this boredom.

Was he being punished? Pain he could understand but this, the waiting was pointless. If there was no reason for him to be awake, he should not be awake. Time passed and he grew restless. Finally, one day he stood. His knees wobbled, muscles surprised by the sudden action.

He expected to be caught, to be punished for doing something without being told. For acting without instruction. No one said a word.

~

"Let me see him," said a voice, from somewhere down the hall. The tone was urgent, desperate. It was not one of the usual voices, which was enough to make him stop his push ups and look curiously at the door. His body had rebelled against so much inactivity, so when no one stopped him he worked his muscles. They never stopped him.

"Captain Rogers-- _Steve--_ just wait a minute."

"I'm done waiting. How long have you had him, why wasn't I told?" Initially desperate, the tone had turned demanding and angry. He moved to his cot and sat. The words meant little, not directly spoken to him.

“You know what he's done,” the second voice said. “What he's capable of. He's a weapon and things are... delicate. There are some calling for his execution, for trials.”

“Coulson--” The voices grew nearer. There was nothing else in this hallway, not that he knew, so they must have been speaking about him. “He's my friend.”

It was disconcerting to him, that so many voices were both familiar and unfamiliar. The details of past missions rarely stuck. Familiar voices were ones that he had heard since he was last on ice, but the others... there was something recognizable in them too. Two men stopped on the other side of his door, their profiles visible through the reinforced glass.

No.

He flattened himself against the furthest wall, becoming something defensive and small.

No, it couldn't be him. It was a test, this was all a test. Maybe a test and a punishment rolled into one. His own thoughts distracted him from the conversation happening in the hall. The opening of the door surprised him, though he did not visibly react.

Captain Rogers. That's why it was familiar. He was the reason for his last wipe, for the pain.

The man was not wearing his suit, but civilian clothes. Still, it was impossible not to recognize his profile. He remembered those eyes, boring into his own, begging. It had not been the desperate begging to live that he'd encountered with other targets. There was no pleading, sobbing, compromising. This man had been willing to die. So what was he begging for? 

“I killed you,” he said, before the captain could speak. He kept his gaze trained on the man's shoes, willing some resolve into his voice. “I killed you.”

He should have. He'd been told to, he'd tried to. But he hadn't.

“No, Buck, you didn't.” Rogers crouched down in front of his cot, clearly making an attempt to appear less threatening.

“Stop calling me that,” he demanded, rising to his feet. “Stop-- just stop.” If this was a test, perhaps he was supposed to kill him again. The only weapons in the room were the ones pointed at him, which had raised the moment he got to his feet. Captain Rogers shook his head. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You know me.”

“I don't.” He stepped forward as the other man stood up. There was that expression in his eyes again. Begging. Pleading. He reached out to push him away. “Stop lying!”

His hands never touched Rogers' chest. The guards were on him before he even got close, forcing him back onto the cot, restraining him. He struggled briefly, but even the Asset could not overcome six men without any weapons. Rogers disappeared from view behind bodies and tactical gear. When finally he was let go, the man was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

He thought, maybe even hoped, that would be the end of it. He'd proven that he knew Rogers was the enemy and now they could put him back on ice. Things would go back to normal and when he woke he'd get a new gun and a new knife and a new target.

Instead, he got another visitor. He was unfamiliar, but at least he wasn't lying through his teeth about who he was. He pulled free from his shirt pocket a small device that looked like a pen, or an injector.

“Easy there big guy,” the newcomer said when he flinched. “Just taking a scan. That's some pretty nice tech you've got there. Can you take it off, let me see?”

He blinked and pulled up the sleeve of his cotton t-shirt to reveal the joint where metal welded against skin.

“Ouch. That's a shame, I could probably build you a new one.” As he spoke he moved the scanner up and down the length of his arm. “You getting this, JARVIS?”

It didn't seem that the man's words were directed at him, so he kept silent.

“Right, you ever get back on your feet, I'll build you something real nice. Modify what you've got. How'd you feel about a repulsor beam, hm?”

He said nothing, barely reacting when the man shook a finger in his face. “If you turn out to be a good guy,” he specified. “Baddies don't need another advantage, you feel me?”

It seemed that he was done, so he carefully shifted his shirt back over his shoulder.

“Good talk. See you again sometime. Maybe. Maybe not, you're kinda creeping me out.”

 ~

He was asleep when the woman entered, but was quick to sit up at the sound of the door, fists clenched and ready to defend himself.

 _“I am not your enemy.”_ It was the sound of his masters’ tongue that made him lower his hands. Perhaps finally there would be a briefing, some instruction. She raised her hands, showing empty palms and he relaxed as much as he ever did. She was familiar, but not. Perhaps she’d been a handler before?

 _“Who is?”_ In the past a question like that might have gotten him slapped. He was not to speak unless spoken to, unless an answer was required of him. He was supposed to be still, a receptacle for information, taking what was given.

 _“That’s up to you,”_ she replied, stepping a little further into the room. _“Your masters are gone.”_

 _“Gone?”_ No. His masters were perpetual. Without them, he was nothing, he was under the ice, not to rise until they needed him. Gone did not fit. It wasn’t right.

“Now you hold your own leash.” Her gaze was like steel, watching him for any reaction or movement. He tried to give none. _“What are you going to do?”_

“ _I do as instructed_.” At least it was a question he knew the answer to. Follow orders, obey.

_“If you have no instructions?”_

For a brief second, the first time since she’d entered the room, his gaze flickered from the floor. He met her eyes, revealing his own uncertainty. _“I don't know,”_ he admitted.

 _“You’ll have to decide.”_ Her voice was soft, but her eyes hard. For a long time she stayed, watching.

She said nothing more.

~

For the first time that he could remember, he began to dream. He wished he hadn't.

Nights were easier when it was just the blank slate of sleep, a comfort that he had long forgotten. Before, the ice had been his sleep. There were a few days of silent, peaceful rest and then as though someone had set off a gun, he began to dream.

He woke with a throat raw from screaming. His body, which had never betrayed him, shook in cold sweats that soaked his t-shirt through. He bolted upright, gaze scanning the room and hands reaching for a weapon that wasn't there.

In the end, he decided that not sleeping was better, but without the ice he had little choice in the matter. 

~

He dreamed of a time when he had two arms made of flesh and bone. The Asset had never had two arms, so he knew it was a dream. It had to be.

He looked down at work roughened hands. A sea scented breeze provided some relief from the blazing summer sun. He could hear the call of the gulls, of other men chattering while they worked.

“Ye ain't being paid to stand about all day, Barnes,” someone shouted behind him. No, he was being paid to shift crates. He worked long hours, loading and unloading the ships that came in. His muscles ached, the back of his neck red from the sun.

He had never worked at the docks. His hand knew nothing but the grasp of a gun or a knife, he was certain. It wasn't real. 

~

The dreams continued. He hated them, whether they were nightmares of pain, fire, and ice, or these flashes of another life that could not be real. The latter woke something in him, filled him with an unfamiliar contentedness while he was asleep. It was always a shock to wake.

He knew they weren't real, that they couldn't be real. It was a trick, a test of some kind and he did not want to fail because failure always meant more pain.

The only pain he'd experienced recently was that which he'd inflicted upon himself. Someone was watching, though. He'd get his due, he knew it. He always had.

Regardless of what he knew, he began to feel a sense of disassociation. His arm, the manufactured metal and circuitry, did not belong. It wasn't part of him, it wasn't  _right._

Fingers scrabbled at the seam of welded flesh and metal.

_Can you take it off, let me see?_

It didn't come off. It never came off and he couldn't imagine it separate from himself, an object. But that's what it was. It was a machine, it was a tool, it was not him.

He scratched and pried until his fingertips were bloody. Perhaps beneath all of the machinery, hidden by sheets of metal, was an arm of flesh and bone. He tried to free it, scrapping and digging until the arm gave a disgruntled whirr and ceased to move as it should.

It hung limp and broken, nothing more than a swinging weight against his side. A detriment, not an asset.

He waited for his handlers to come and fix it, but no one did. A woman entered instead. She cleaned and bandaged his fingers and the open wounds on his shoulder.

“Don't hurt yourself,” she told him. He looked up at her, startled. That had never been one of his orders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changed Nat's convo, They're both speaking Russian.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop (and by extension the first draft of this chapter) were stolen, thus the delay. Have a mini update instead.

Rogers came to see him again, face pinched in an expression of concern and not a little sadness. He looked weary, dark circles beneath his eyes. An easy target.

If he was to be a target, at least.

For now that still seemed not to be the case. No one told him to attack, so he listened and watched as Rogers leaned in the doorway. Bright blue eyes watched him in return.

“They’re going to put you under and do surgery on your arm,” Rogers said.

He didn’t really listen after that, because the important part was under. Under was ice, was sweet relief and meaning in his life again, or if nothing else the suspension of this unnatural half life that had no purpose. He was relieved, grateful even to hear it, but he did not smile.

The Asset did not have preferences, likes and dislikes. He did not want to be wiped, not when he could just have the cold embrace of the ice and nothingness.

~ 

_James Barnes, 107 th Division, 32557038 _

He lay on something cold and hard, which was familiar, and his left shoulder burnt like it was being branded. The pain was also familiar, as was the bite of restraints that held his wrists and ankles.

_James Barnes, 107 th Division, 32557038_

Around him voices murmured in hushed whispers. A machine beeped out the accelerating rhythm of his own heartbeat and above him there was light.

  _James Barnes, 107 th Division, 32557038_

Not just light. A halo of blond hair surrounding a face he could recognize despite the shadows. The whispers grew louder, tones concerned as he blinked beneath the surgical light. His own voice was thick, words slurring slightly.

  _James Barnes, 107 th Division, 32… Steve?_

~

It was warm when he woke, which just wasn’t fair. It had always been cold, shivers wracking his body as he readjusted and gained consciousness. This was different, another sign that things were not the same. Though the past was composed of pain and fear, it also held familiarity and purpose for which he longed.

What he got instead was a bed too soft and a blanket too warm: things that were wrong in ways he could not articulate.

What had he done to deserve this? He sat up, head spinning and reached to pull away the blanket only to find that nothing happened. His arm was gone. A frown on his lips, he moved the right to shift the covers away and inspected the space that had once been metal.

There was nothing, only stark white bandages covering his shoulder. No stump, no arm exposed now that the metal plates were gone. He was not the two handed boy from the dreams and now he was not the Asset. He was neither; he was nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags! Suicide ideation in the first little section.

He could kill himself with the blanket, he thought. Or the sheets on the bed. There is enough fabric to make a noose, so long as he finds something to anchor it to. He is useless, so he should stop. Right?

But no one told him if it was right or wrong and though the guards don’t seem to mind him exercising or sleeping without permission, he has a feeling that they would protest if he tries to kill himself.

What had the nurse said?

_Don’t hurt yourself._

He might not have his arm, but he can still follow orders.

~

Over the following week he has many visitors. Most are nurses or other staff, come to check on his shoulder. It’s healing well, they tell him, and soon they stop coming to check at all.

When there is no one there he lays on the cot and stares at the ceiling.

Sometimes men in suits come and watch him, but he keeps still and keeps staring. No one gives him orders, no one speaks to him. He stares and sleeps and eats; there is no reason to exercise. He isn’t the Asset anymore.

At least he doesn’t think so.

Rogers and Coulson come, arguing outside his cell. He sits up for that, watching their profiles. When the door opens and a third man enters he raises his head.

There is no squad of gunmen, but he recognizes this man. Like the woman, but… no. The memories aren’t there.

“Pretty sparse digs,” the man observes, looking over what little there is in the cell. “Sam Wilson. Thought you might like some company while those two battle it out.”

After looking to him for permission—which he does not give, because it is not his to give— Wilson sits down on the cot next to him. He reaches into his jacket and pulls something free.

It’s a book of puzzles and a small, beaten up pencil about half as long as his finger. Wilson gives him a half smile and opens the flimsy pages to an unfinished puzzle.

“Don’t think these were popular last time you were… you. It’s Sudoku, see?” To his confusion, Wilson begins to explain the rules. It’s a simple logic puzzle. Once he’d explained, Wilson frowns at the page, clearly thinking hard. He writes down a number.

It is wrong.

“Why?” His voice is rough, from some combination of extended silence during the day and screaming during the night. Wilson shrugs.

“It’s something to do, takes up time. My nephews gave me a stack of these little books last Christmas. I’m still on the first one.” The way he talks is like he’s chatting with an old friend. There’s a pause. “You want to try?”

He does. He doesn’t know why, but he does.

It takes a moment to get settled, the little book open on his knee and pencil grasped in his remaining hand. He feels inexplicably nervous, like Wilson is watching him. Like it’s a test. A quick glance reveals the other man is watching the door instead.

The pencil wobbles in his hand as he sketches out a two in the first box. It gets easier from there.

He must have lost track of time, of his surroundings, because he looks up to find Rogers in front of him asking, “Buck?”

Rogers isn’t dead and it seems like no one he’s interacted with lately actually wants him to be. He shifts his gaze, looking not at Rogers’ shoes but at his elbows instead. Two elbows for two arms. His grip on the pencil stub tightens.

Coulson is there too, near the door and Wilson still sits on his left, posture open and relaxed where Coulson’s is stiff.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Rogers says in that same, gentle tone. He’s heard people speak to stray dogs like this. Soft and small and unthreatening.

He has never been unthreatening, himself. That’s not the point of him.

Rogers is crouching again and he doesn’t understand why. There is no question to answer and it just makes his gaze shift, sliding to focus on Rogers’ ear instead of his face. He can still see his small smile out of the corner of his eye.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he says haltingly. He’d spoken out of turn to Wilson and not been punished for it, so perhaps this is okay? Perhaps he’s allowed to ask.

He flinches back as Rogers’ expression crumples, only to find that Wilson has his hand at the small of his back. There’s no knife, just a warm palm keeping him from moving any further.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Rogers says after taking a deep breath. “Just for you to be okay. To start feeling better. The doctors said there were no complications with your shoulder?”

He nods, still wary and unsure. He earns another smile from Rogers, though it doesn’t look as natural as the first.

“Good.” It seems like he expects something more. “They treating you all right in here?”

He hesitates for a long moment and the nods again. The hesitation is enough for Rogers to pounce on and he presses. “You sure?”

He doesn’t know what to do in this situation. There are too many parameters. All right? He isn’t dying. His body is fed regularly and he has no wounds. They don’t hurt him.

But… that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? If they hurt him he would know he was doing something wrong. He could make it right and then go back on ice. This limbo, with the staring and the dreams is driving him mad.

“You can tell us what you think,” Wilson adds gently. His hand is still warm on his back. Anchoring him. “You won’t get in trouble for anything you say.”

He looks down at the puzzle book. That’s enough to convince him.

“I don’t know what the mission is,” he says after a long moment. It’s hard not to flinch back, but none of the three men in the room with him make any moves at all. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

The woman had said he has no masters, no instructions. It is too inconceivable to be true.

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Rogers says immediately. But Rogers is… was—he’s an unknown factor now. Not a target or a handler, at least he doesn’t seem to be. So who is he to say that he’s doing nothing wrong? Wilson is no better, not really. His eyes turn to Coulson. The man gives orders. He controls who enters the cell. That’s something, isn’t it?

“There is no mission,” Rogers goes on, not privy to his distracted thoughts. He lifts his chin to Coulson.

“If there’s no mission, why am I not on ice?”

He realizes that he has spoken more in the past half hour than in the past two weeks. No one reprimands him. Coulson steps forward.

“Sergeant Barnes,” he says, addressing him formally with a name that is not— was not, could not be—his own. “You are, for lack of a better term, on leave. Now that we have you back, you won’t be going on ice again, won’t be going on missions either. Hydra doesn’t control you any longer.”

_We do_ , was unspoken. He couldn’t leave it that way.

“Hydra doesn’t,” he says and the name feels wrong on his tongue. He’s only ever been a cog, the politics and organization beyond his awareness. “But you do.”

The smile Coulson gives him is forced. “For the time being, for everyone’s safety. You’re not well right now. You need to recover.”

“To be okay.” He parrots Rogers’ words, because he doesn’t trust his own.

“That’s right, Buck. We just want you to be okay.”

~

The three men talk some more, perhaps even to him, but he keeps his head lowered and his gaze on the number puzzle.

He’s not well, but he’s not doing anything wrong either, apparently.

He’s not sure what okay looks like, but no one has punished him so far and maybe just maybe he’s doing what they want.  He writes down another two in an appropriate box.

“He can’t keep that.” They’re leaving now, but Coulson lingers, eyes on the pencil that he hasn’t returned. Wilson didn’t ask for it back, but he offers it to him anyway. He isn’t done, but Coulson’s voice is firm.

“Come on man, he’s got nothing to do in here. A room like this isn’t doing his head any favors,” Wilson protests, not taking back his things.

“It’s not a weapon,” Rogers adds. “Let him have it. He can’t hurt anyone.”

He hasn’t been punished for speaking up before, so he does now. They should know this about him.

“I can. Between the right vertebrae or through the eye. It’s enough to damage the brain.”

It takes a minute for him to identify the look that Rogers and Wilson give him as exasperated. They want him to keep the pencil, not hurt someone with it.

“But he won’t,” Rogers says firmly, glancing between him and Coulson. “Right?”

“I won’t,” he repeats. Coulson rolls his eyes and shakes his head, stalking out of the cell. He doesn’t demand the puzzle book or the pencil.

“You keep that,” Wilson tells him. “If you finish it, I’ll bring you another. Alright?”

He nods mutely, clutching his possessions—his, they just said it, they were letting him have them—to his chest. The smiles he gets in return have a hint of sadness in them as Rogers and Wilson leave the cell.

For the first time that he can remember his own lips move into—not quite a smile, but something more than his blank resting expression. He opens the book again and finds another two.

This is better than staring.


	5. Chapter 5

He tracks time by events that have happened to him, as numbers and days don’t mean much. Some things happened Before The Surgery and some things After The Puzzle Book, or somewhere in between. He’s still useless with just one arm, but he can do the puzzles and it feels like he’s achieving something.

He wonders if Wilson would really bring him a new book if he finishes all of these.

The nurses stop visiting and he doesn’t see anyone—Coulson or Rogers, or even the woman that had spoken to him in Russian. He sees the woman who delivers his food and occasionally provides him with clean clothes. She never has any instructions or questions for him.

It is sometime After The Puzzle Book that he gets a new visitor. She brings a chair with her, the wooden legs screeching against the concrete. He sits on the cot far away from her and doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is watching.

Her hair is dark, streaked in places with grey and when she smiles the corner of her eyes crinkle. She could be his grandmother, he thinks, before he realizes that he does not have a grandmother and James Buchanan Barnes’ family is long dead.

“My name is Adelaide,” she tells him. “And I’d like to tell you a true story.”

~

True is a matter of perspective, he thinks, but he doesn’t say as much because a thought like that could very easily get him hurt. Still, he listens to Adelaide talk about all manner of things. She starts with New York in the 1940s. Tells him about how Rogers became Captain America.

Images play in his mind, things he can’t place.

When she mentions Barnes, he snaps his little pencil in half. The pieces fly: one hitting the wall, the other clattering to the floor.

“You think I’m Barnes,” he says into the silence. “You all do. That’s what—what _he_ says too. But I’m not. That’s not me.”

“Who do you think you are?” Adelaide replies. She’s not arguing with him or telling him he’s wrong, telling him he’s out of line. She’s just asking.

“They call me Soldat. The Winter Soldier.”

She makes a small note on the yellow notepad she has balanced on her knee. Her gaze never leaves him, though he stares at the floor. The pencil is broken now. He can’t use it.

“What do you call yourself?”

When he doesn’t give a reply after five long minutes, she leaves.

She hands him the pen before she goes.

~

The dreams multiply and intensify after that, which he thinks should bother him. More than anything it makes him curious. He wakes up screaming twice a night, shivering from cold and remembering things, things that are not missions but that somehow happened before there were missions. He remembers having a stump and laying on a table of metal with men in surgeon’s masks leaning over him. He remembers pain, bright and visceral.

He knows, somehow, that these memories are of the creation of The Winter Soldier and that this must mean he was something before that. He was not conjured up from thin air, the perfect killing machine. There were operations, tests, and training. There were wipes and more wipes, but if the Asset was born from a wipe, what was it that they were wiping away?

~

Adelaide returns when he’s finished twenty-three and a half puzzles using the blue pen she had handed him. He’s almost done every puzzle in the book, but not quite. Now he has to give the pen back.

She shakes her head and doesn’t reach for it.

“You keep that. I brought my own.”

Nodding, he sets the pen and the book aside, not wanting to break anything as he had done on her last visit. He watches her, but not because he expects an attack; he is not assessing her to predict her actions. He is waiting. He is curious.

She is quiet for a long time, watching him watch her. She does not seem to mean to tell him anything.

“Tell me about him. About Barnes,” he says eventually, surprising them both. She opens her mouth and he flinches back. Weeks without orders, without a mission and he has already lost his touch. He knows not to speak and even more not to make demands, yet he’s just done so.

She doesn’t reach for a weapon; she does not have one. Instead her expression softens. “Why don’t you tell me, instead.”

“You think I’m him. You all do. Why?”

She taps her pen against the pad of paper, shifts slightly in her seat, and then leans forward. She tells him a story, this time not about Rogers but about Barnes. She tells him about a mission in the mountains, on a train and in the snow.

“He’s dead,” he says, when she describes his fall. “A man couldn’t survive that.”

Adelaide raises a brow. “Could you?”

 

~

Sometime after that visit, he is moved to new quarters. Instead of being escorted to an empty locker room to bathe twice a week, he is given what seems to be a small, sparsely furnished apartment. There is a bedroom with a bed and a dresser, a bathroom with toilet, sink and shower stall, and a small sitting room. In the sitting room is a sofa and a desk.

They leave him alone to acclimate to the new rooms, so much more than a simple cell and cot, and on the desk he finds two things.

The first is a new book of Sudoku puzzles, with a short note on the front page identifying the book as a gift from Sam Wilson. Stunned, he flips through the pages of empty puzzles before turning back to the note and tracing the signature with a finger.

This is for him, because he’d enjoyed them. The puzzles aren’t useful or productive in any way. They aren’t necessary, like the equipment he is given for missions. They are just for him.

And they are not the only things, it seems.

There is also a stack of books. He disregards the note on top of them for a moment to look at the titles: _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, American Gods, To Kill a Mockingbird, Middlesex…_

None of them are familiar, so he goes back to the folded scrap of paper, which reads

_I thought these might help you get back in the world. -S. Rogers_

~

“Why don’t you believe that you are James Barnes?” Adelaide asks him a while later. His breakfast now comes with a newspaper and there is a plain calendar hanging on the wall near the desk. He marks off the days and realizes she’s been visiting him twice a week.

It’s Friday now and in two days the newspaper will be bigger. He thinks about that, about the crossword puzzles that still stump him more often than not, because those are easier things to think about than her question.

After a few moments of silence, she rephrases. “Why don’t you want to be him?”

Before now, when he went regularly back on the ice, he knew what good was. Good was following orders and successfully completing his missions. Good was doing what he was told so that he didn’t get hurt. Morality as the rest of the world knew it was something for other people. It was not his to be concerned with: it was beyond him.

It wasn’t beyond Barnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you courtesy of the Captain America marathon I watched on the 4th of July.
> 
> I'm also curious as to what books you would give Bucky. That was probably the hardest part of this.


End file.
